Elon Accelerates Humanity: Week of AI, Space, and Robots

Hi everyone,

It's been a wild week. I accidentally became a travel blogger. After briefly returning to the USA, I shared my thoughts on the USA and its problems compared to Japan. My post on X got 47,300,000 views.

Don't worry. I will continue to write primarily with the mission of helping people thrive in the Age of AI.

1) Things Are Getting Better

This picture of the SpaceX Superheavy Booster is amazing.

We are now significantly closer to being a multi-planetary species thanks to Elon and all of the amazing people at SpaceX.

Elon Accelerates Humanity: Week of AI, Space, and Robots

This week was one of the best weeks for humanity in my lifetime, and most people don’t seem to have even noticed.

IMO, the last week will go down in history as the week the Robotics and Space revolution started. And the advancements we talk about every week with AI are driving all of this.

In the last week, Elon Musk announced driverless taxis and buses with live demos — showed the latest version of the Optimus robot with a swarm of them dancing and talking(tho it is now widely believed that the talking was done with remote control workers, not an LLM, but anyways, freaking cool.).

Oh, and right after doing that, he played Diablo 4 online. Then he launched a spaceship and caught its booster with a robot hand using AI. Which he says was at least partially inspired by Kong vs. Godzilla. 🤣

You can disagree with his politics all you want—that’s fine, and I respect that. And of course, tons of amazing people at his companies helped make all of this possible. But he is the prime driver and genius who willed all this into being. He’s the builder of our generation, and we’re incredibly lucky he exists.

Because of these advancements, we will make it to Mars, which dramatically increases humanity's chance of avoiding extinction and gives us something to aspire to.

We will have robots helping build cities and taking humanity to levels only dreamed of before. I’ve never been more pumped in my life. The sci-fi books I read as a kid are coming true.

We should do everything possible to support and create more people like Elon, not demonize them.

I love this tweet from Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga. What if we had political leaders that invested in accelerating our future faster instead of trying to slow down technological progress?

3) These AI Tools Are Disrupting The Entire Podcast Industry

In this week’s episode of The Next Wave, Matt Wolfe and I talked about AI tools that are disrupting the podcast industry. Check it out!

Also, please subscribe to The Next Wave on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. 

4) Perplexity Finance: Bloomberg Killer?

As many of you know, Perplexity is one of my favorite AI startups. I still use ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and a handful of other AI tools, but Perplexity has become a daily mainstay. It’s replaced Google for me about 90% of the time.

Today, Aravind and the Perplexity team released a potential Bloomberg killer. Perplexity Finance.

Check it out here with Nvidia’s stock page.

Playing with this feels like the future of finance. It’s fun to use and makes it easy to dig into financials. I asked it to compare NVIDIA’s Price-to-Earnings Ratio to its competitors, and within seconds, it gave me tons of data and this table.

I can see how this will evolve. Eventually, you’ll be able to easily ask any question about any company and get real-time comparisons and investment suggestions.

This seems like it will severely impact the $15-20B a year Bloomberg Terminal business. And in the long term, it makes me wonder: Will all of our financial advisors be AI?

5) Adobe Expands Firefly with Game-Changing AI Video Features

After months of quiet, Adobe is back with some exciting announcements at their Adobe Max conference. While the "Perfect Blend" feature for photo editing is cool (check out the demo below from my friend Bilawal), the real showstopper is the expansion of Firefly into video.

Firefly, Adobe's AI tool introduced last year, now boasts impressive AI video capabilities. The standout feature is its ability to extend existing video content, seamlessly creating new frames to smooth transitions or lengthen shots. This "generative extend" capability, integrated into Premiere Pro, could revolutionize video editing workflows.

While Adobe emphasizes Firefly's "commercial safety" due to its training on Adobe Stock and public databases, the real excitement lies in how this expansion will make AI even more mainstream in creative industries. Just as artists and designers got used to using Photoshop without a second thought, the same will likely happen with AI-powered video tools. And Adobe, with its vast user base of creators, will be a big reason for that change.

I can’t wait to see how this changes Hollywood, an industry that seriously needs change.

That’s all for today. Please consider sharing the newsletter with your friends if you think they’d enjoy it. 🙏

Please give me feedback on Twitter. I am still figuring out the best format for this newsletter. Which part did you like? Dislike? Do you have other suggestions? Please let me know—just tweet @NathanLands.

-Nathan